November 12, 1998 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Education has positive impact on labor market activity of severely disabled

Additional education generally enhances labor market outcomes. For workers with disabilities, additional education not only improves the chances of labor market activity, but also reduces the gap in the labor market participation between workers with severe disabilities and workers with no disability.

[Table data—TXT]

For workers with less than 4 years of high school, 75.2 percent of those with no disability reported labor market activity, compared with 17.3 percent of those with severe disabilities, a gap of 57.9 percentage points. For workers with college degrees, ninety percent of those with no disability reported labor market activity compared with 52.4 percent of those with a severe disability, a gap of 37.6 percentage points.

When considering workers with severe disabilities, it is possible that the disability affects both education and labor market activity. That is, a condition may both impede acquiring an education and make labor market activity more difficult.

Additional information is available from "Persons with disabilities: Labor Market Activity, 1994", Monthly Labor Review, September 1998. Data in this report are a product of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, Bureau of the Census.